Residents of unincorporated Chatham County who’d like to vote on having curbside recycling got a step closer Thursday to that ballot.

Citizens for Curbside Recycling delivered their 20,304 handwritten signatures — a total of about 1,700 pages scanned to a disk — to Chatham County Probate Court. The group has spent the last two years collecting enough signatures in coffeehouses, restaurants, and other small businesses and at festivals to meet the Georgia requirement to force this issue into the voting booth. Their goal was about 13,500 signatures, or 10 percent of the active county registered voters as required by the law, but they collected a lot more for good measure.

“We know there are duplicates and pranks,” said organizer Karen Grainey. “Knowing that, we needed more signatures than required so we’d have an adequate number of good signatures.”

Now it’s up to Judge Harris Lewis to decide if the petition is valid. He has 60 days to decide.

It’s far from a done deal, said co-organizer Stacey Kronquest. Georgia has this petition-driven mechanism for forcing a ballot measure in the state constitution since the 1960s, but it hasn’t been successfully tested.

“It’s never been done, so it’s new ground,” she said.

Savannah’s curbside collection started in January 2009, after a similar petition was prepared by the same group and was poised to be filed in court.

“We got 11,000 signatures and only had 60 days to do it (the rules differ for municipalities versus counties) and the city said OK if you drop the petition we’ll do curbside,” Grainey said. “So we withdrew the petition.”

Kronquest and Grainey say the petition showed city officials that many residents wanted curbside.

City spokesman Bret Bell said Citizens for Curbside Recycling was helpful in speeding up the city’s provision of that service. But that’s where the city was headed anyway, particularly after the municipal incinerator, which disposed of a large portion of city trash, lost the main buyer for the steam it produced.

“In the end I’d say the group was helpful in making sure (curbside) happened,” Bell said. “It probably sped up the process.”

The curbside pickup has been successful, Bell said.

“I think it’s really rocking now,” he said. “The collection system is flawless. We continue to see tonnage go up slightly; it’s not dramatic but it continues to go up.”

Savannah was better positioned to take on recycling because the city already collected garbage and so had the trucks and employees to take on the related task.

That’s not true of the unincorporated county, as county officials are quick to point out.

“I’m a little reluctant to grow the size of government especially in these economic times,” said Commissioner Patrick Farrell. “I don’t know if government needs to increase its reach into the private sector.”

Farrell and fellow commissioner Patrick Shay also noted that private haulers will provide a curbside service anywhere in the county for a fee.

“We determined there are multiple private services willing to do curbside for anybody who wanted it,” Shay said. “They just have to subscribe.”

Shay, an architect who lives in Savannah and is a leader in the Chatham Environmental Forum’s plan to make Chatham the greenest county in Georgia, does like the idea of a ballot initiative.

“I think that’s a good thing,” he said. “It raises awareness. In general I’d say it’s good thing to have it on the ballot. Then you’ll have a clear idea of the sentiment of what level of service people want to be receiving.”

Residents of the unincorporated county typically pay lower taxes and receive fewer government services, including trash pickup and fire protection, than those in local municipalities. If it does go to the ballot, Shay wants people to understand the service won’t be free,

“I hope they have a plebiscite and ask are you willing to pay for it,” he said.

County estimates put the cost at a minimum of $15 a month per household, said Commission Chairman Pete Liakakis. Bryan County, which recently instituted curbside, charges its residents $35 a year or less than $3 a month, Grainey said.

The county attorney is looking into some legal points about the petition, Liakakis said, and had specific questions for the state Attorney General about whether the signatures of residents of Savannah and other municipalities could force the issue onto unincorporated residents. Kronquest and Grainey along with attorney Dana Braun who shepherded the petition to court, are certain it meets the law’s requirements.

Kronquest, who lives in the unincorporated county and already subscribes to a private recycling service, figures if the county can provide a pickup service for yard waste, it can pick up recyclables.

“It’s a best practice, especially for a county that wants to be the greenest in the state,” she said. “It’s sort of low hanging fruit, an easy thing to do. Other counties are hopping on board. Unincorporated Bryan started up curbside recycling. Chatham needs to catch up with its neighbors.”